OT: Pulling the cable plug

I cut the cord in January when AT&T jacked up my surcharges when I was under contract. Currently in the process of suing AT&T for the early termination fee they charged me anyways (waiting on hearing date).

I haven't looked back. Death to cable television and their unethical billing practices!

Had PSView since late summer.

Never missed any games, although ABC live I had to use my HD attenna.

Don't miss all the odd channels: "Chiller", "BBC", "Sprout", "Esquire", "Cooking" - who cares.

Cut $100 off cable bill. Over ten years that's $12,000.

 

 

I would also mention that in my experience, the live stream works best with an ethernet cable and not using wifi. I stream through FireTV but I think most of the boxes (not sticks) have an ethernet port. Not sure if the sticks do or not.

I get Amazon Prime, which allows me to watch their shows and pay about $3/episode for a lot of shows that I like, such as The Expanse, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or Taboo.  You can also throw on Cinemax or Showtime subscriptions. HBONow and Netflix and Cinemax and Showtime I will subscribe to occasionally when they are running shows I'm heavily interested in, like Game of Thrones. 

 

I'm done with commercials. Forever.  I will pay more money for the privelege of not being the fucking product. I'm currently using the parents' login for watchespn, which is basically the only pirating I do. I'm not sure when I'll eventually break and do PSVue or this Youtube option. Part of me says it's the right thing to do, the other part says fuck ESPN. 

Right now, I have both Direct TV and Playstation VUE running through a Roku Premier+ (the lowest cost Roku that has an ethernet port). I have both because I want to make sure that the Roku/Playstation VUE combo will work before cutting the coax cord.

I was inspired to do this by the last cord-cutting blog post several weeks ago. After 1 week, Roku/Playstation VUE seems to be working OK, but I haven't yet transferred my learnings to MGoWife. She is skeptical.

We've got solid internet access (I think about 50Mbps down), I've prioritized Roku TCP/IP traffic, and as mentioned, the Roku is hardwired, so I've had zero problems with streaming. Image quality and sound is outstanding.

My complaints are these:

• A lack of well-organized UIs. Roku's and Playstation VUE's UIs are all lovely, quick, and graphical, but I find myself scrolling though rows and rows of events to find what I want.
• A lot of descriptive information is cut off from each live event (mainly sports). I don't need a giant image of the NBA logo and "Washingt." What I want is a tiny Warriors logo and "Washington Wizards vs. Golden State Warriors 2/28/17."
• Each streaming station, both inside and outside the Playstation VUE platform, seems to have it's own way to present events (and all are graphics heavy/info light). These many methods of presentation are sometimes confusing.
• There doesn't appear to be a way to "Record all San Francisco Giants games" and present them as a bundle. I understand that with streaming, it's not exactly like that because some are just there to stream while others are recorded into cloud-based DVRs from the local broadcast, but still, it's the way I want to see them organized and presented.
• Related to that is the fact that a team's games can be on one of several stations. Warriors games can be on CSN Bay Aea, ESPN, TNT, NBC, ABC, CBS, or Fox (all carried by Playstation VUE!). I find myslef Googling "Warriors schedule" to figure out what station it's on and then going to that station on Roku/Playstation VUE to find the game. That's quite cumbersome.

Anyway, that's my experience 1 week into it. I haven't bailed to Direct TV yet but the Roku/Playstation VUE user experience could be a hell of a lot better.

P.S. Please, no downvotes because I'm a Warriors fan. Draymond is a dick, but he's my team's dick and the Warriors are damn fun to watch.

 

for a while. Biggest problwm now is the cable companies in my area have adjusted their pricing to maximize their profit on cord cutters. Just a couple weeks ago i called to try and reduce my bill and NOW the breakdown goes like this: 30 mbps internet as a stand alone service is 89.99 a month...just for internet 200 channels of TV is $20 So, even if I cut the cord, i still have to pay $90 plus whatever the monthly cost is for any streaming services. I found cheaper internet access through another provider, but there are data caps...in order to get a high enough data cap, id be back around $90 again, just for internet service. tl;dr theyll get you coming ir theyll get you going

Just did it this week. Bought a jail broken fire stick with KODI. Still getting use to it. Nervous about trying to make sure I can get high quality M sports. Any suggestions?

I was a cord cutter pioneer a few years ago, now they're really is no reason to keep it.

I cut the cord in June of last year, and am just fine with it. I of course had to keep my internet which is around 50 a month but I swithced to PSvue. I was able to still watch all of the Michigan football games this year, as well as any other sporting event. Just bought some Hi-def antennas for around the house, and get tons of channels

Do people really think these $30 services will remain? 2 things will happen...Cable/satellite will lower costs or these services will up costs as the channels they provide ask for more and more. Third option is cable providers spike the cost for Internet.

I look forward to dirt cheap or free broadband and a la carte channel subscriptions. Speaking of which I wonder if anyone has crunched the numbers on a Wolverine Network app? Basically M fans can pay $XX per month to receive all Michigan sports content from non asshat announcers. I would pay for this and I bet Michigan could make some dough here.

I booted cable about 3years ago. The only true downside is no DVR. With cable logins I've never missed a game I wanted to watch. I'm also looking into an IPTV service, roughly $10/mo and TONS of channels. More can be said about streaming shows after they have aired, there are plenty of great options.

we disconnect all TV after football season (like now) and will reconnect in the fall in time for the first college games.  i started doing this about 10 yrs ago and it has worked very well.   saves money and time.  higher monthly payment when we have TV, but for 3-4 months, who cares.  

lots of other good ideas on this thread too.  good luck. 

Great discussion and there are some great ideas and alternatives on here for Sticking it to the Man.

I've cut the cable several times over the years but recently did it again in December due to finances (and got hosed by DirecTV for opting out of contract early). 

Right now I'm using Sling TV and I've used it before. I really like the pricing at $20 a month with options that give me somewhat of an ala carte feel. BUT, the big problem is no Big Ten channel which is why I'm also looking elsewhere but until football season its not an issue. At this point the PSVue and Youtube TV look pretty similar in pricing and packaging. 

The only thing I'm noticing about the other streaming options is they really aren't very ala carte on channels yet but instead do the packaging similar to cable/satellite. I really look forward to the day where I can pick and choose what channels I want at an affordable price. 

but lack the big balls to actually make it happen. Maybe the time is right to make the move.

This is just a test for new picture. Cable does suck though.